


Heat

by eyra



Series: Heat [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Chronic Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Illness - not specified, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 19:25:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1699781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyra/pseuds/eyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus is angry. Sirius is scared. The heat is a welcome distraction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heat

There’s a crisp packet stuck to the bottom of Remus’s left shoe. He toes it off with his right, kicking it away half-heartedly as he shrugs his hoodie up despite the heat and stuffs his hands deep into the pockets with a scowl on his face. He’d fucking kill for a cigarette right now.

Down the hill at the bottom of the park, the band launch into another slow number, continuing the drone of their never-ending set for the thinning crowd and the growing mist of midges that have descended on the field now that the bonfires and BBQs have all gone out. He’s down there somewhere too – probably just as miserable, Remus thinks glumly – and Remus should really just text him, find him and go home with him so they can sort this out and not let the entire night go to waste. Balmy summer evenings like these were, in Remus’s opinion, made for slow, quiet sex with the windows open, the lamps off, silhouettes visible only against the dying orange light to the west and the occasional blue glare of someone’s phone when James or Pete tried calling to find out why the two of them didn’t come meet them in the park for a kick-about like they said they would.

Remus feels his cock twitch in his jeans at the thought of Sirius’s dark hair sticking to his temples like it had last night. It hasn’t rained for over three weeks and despite everything (or maybe because of everything) Remus has found himself in a near-permanent state of arousal. It’s mainly the heat that does it for him, and the way Sirius’s t-shirt clings just a little to his lower back when Remus purposefully drops behind a few steps on their way to the cinema, or the corner shop or wherever. Drops back to chat to Pete, he says, or to pick up something that he didn’t drop, or to stare for a few heady seconds at the sweat-darkened patch of jersey shirt fabric just above the waistline of Sirius’s low-slung jeans and imagine pulling him into the Wetherspoon’s down the next sideroad for an impromptu mutual handjob in the Gents'.

That’s precisely what they should be doing now, Remus sulks. A bit of frotting in the trees around the old bandstand or a quick suck behind the temporary Portaloos (and the idea of bending over inside one of the plastic cabins and taking it after an evening of drunk men likely pissing up the walls doesn’t repulse Remus as much as he thinks it should). But instead, he’s sat up the hill on an old stone wall by himself because… because he’s a fucking child, if he’s being honest with himself. Because he’s had one pint too many and he’s frustrated and scared and he has been for weeks and Sirius only wants to help because _he’s_ scared too, although Remus knows he’ll never admit it. He’s seen the worry in his eyes, the hesitancy in his movements when Remus asks him to chuck him the carton of cigarettes from the white plastic table in James’s back garden. They all think he doesn’t notice. A shared glance between Sirius and James, a helpless shrug from Pete as he goes back to chewing his nails, a half-second of awkward silence before the packet’s in Remus’s hand and Lily is carrying on the conversation like that didn’t just happen and like they’re not all thinking the same thing.

It’s not as bad as it could’ve been, his doctor had said. The first and second rounds of scans were inconclusive but enough to cause concern, and Remus had already convinced himself (privately, when he was in bed alone and Sirius was texting him asking why he wasn’t answering his phone) that it was definitely as bad as his dad told him it wasn’t, and that the six letter word they’d been skirting around for weeks was about to become the hinging point of his entire life and when he’d had his third hospital visit and the doctor had sat the two of them down and told them it wasn’t That, but Something Else, Remus had cried. With relief, or something – he wasn’t sure – and John had let him whilst he’d arranged Remus’s next appointment and picked up the prescriptions and the pamphlets and shaken the doctor’s hand, and Remus had cried again later that night when John had poured him a small glass of something strong from a bottle that he kept on top of the dresser in the dining room. He’d stopped crying by the time John had pressed a cotton pad to the pinprick of blood that the needle had drawn out on Remus’s thigh, and he hadn’t cried the next night when John had handed him the syringe and told him he’d better learn how to do it himself, because he wasn’t a child and John didn’t want him to feel like one.

He certainly feels like one now.

_“Remus…”_

That was all it had taken. One gentle caution when Remus rolled his third cigarette whilst balancing his plastic beaker of cheap ale on his knees, the condensation soaking the torn denim of his jeans as his hands stilled and he scowled at Sirius.

_“When are you going to stop doing that?”_

His own words had been cold, softened slightly by the beer but sharp enough to wound and he knew he was being unreasonable. Ever since he’d sat them all down at the beginning of the summer and told them, Sirius has made it his personal mission to be Remus’s on-hand nurse and that’s fine, when they’re lying in bed together and Sirius is massaging Remus’s aching muscles and whispering soft encouragements in his ear, or kneeling by the cheap plywood bedside cabinet and counting out today’s pills into a plastic tray whilst Remus is in the shower. Remus doesn’t say it and he doesn’t have to - he needs that help, and he needs Sirius’s unwavering kindness because as great a man as John Lupin is, gentility isn’t his strong suit. And if Remus has the occasional thought of Sirius in scrubs and himself naked in the bath whilst Sirius slowly rubs a flannel between his aching legs… well, that’s his prerogative. He’s the sick one.

It only becomes a problem when Sirius says “no”. “No, let’s go home” instead of going to the pub with the others. “No, I think Pete smoked the last one” when Remus knows full well he didn’t and there’s another carton in the Co-op bag on the kitchen counter anyway. The way Remus sees it, if this thing is going to get worse like his doctor said it might and if he has crutches to look forward to in three years and a wheelchair in five, then he sure as hell isn’t going to start holding back now. Yes he’s scared and yes it’s fucking unfair because “gay, one dead parent” is already a shit hand to have been dealt but he’s not about to add “disabled” or “dying” to his pack just yet, and that’s why he’s sitting up here by himself rather than down the hill with an armful of Sirius, he reasons.

The band are still strumming away and the remaining crowd are still swaying hazily twenty minutes later. Remus shifts on the low wall, feeling his thin blister pack of tablets crackle in his jeans back pocket. He pulls them out, popping one into the near-empty lukewarm beer on the ground next to him before swigging it all back with a grimace.

“I’d say you’re not supposed to take them with alcohol, but you’d probably just go off on one again.”

Sirius’s voice is quiet as he hovers by the tree a little way across from Remus’s perch, but his face says he’s pissed off. _Rightly so_ , Remus thinks resignedly. _I would be too._

“Right,” he begins, a little unsteadily, looking back at the earth between his grubby Converse with a frown. “I know yo-”

“No, shut up,” Sirius snaps, breaching the gap between them and sinking heavily onto the wall beside Remus, their thighs pressing lightly together as Sirius snatches the half-empty packet of pills from Remus’s hand and stuffs them into his own pocket. “Just listen for a minute.”

Remus doesn’t argue. He frowns again, scuffing the side of his shoe against a half-buried old tree root in the soil, but he doesn’t argue.

“I don’t care if you think I’m a prick.”

“I don’t think yo-” Remus starts tiredly, shaking his head only to be cut off again by Sirius’s sharp admonishment.

“I said shut up.”

The band tapers out down the hill to a smattering of lazy applause, the microphone whining perfunctorily as the roadies start to take down the set. Remus is silent.

“I don’t care if you think I’m a prick,” Sirius repeats, his voice a little softer than before. He still doesn’t look at Remus. “You can bitch and moan and tell me to fuck off all you want. I don’t give a shit.”

Remus is picking at the hole in the denim over his right knee, the fine blue threads fraying as Remus rolls them between his thumb and forefinger and chews apprehensively on his bottom lip. Sirius is quiet for a few moments.

“If you don’t want my help, then say,” he mutters, his voice barely carrying now and he still won’t look at Remus. “But I think you do, and you can’t have it both ways.”

It makes sense. It’s a spectrum, really, this whole “Looking After Remus” scheme they’ve thrown together over the past month whilst they thought he wasn’t looking; it starts with Lily quietly switching Remus’s third beer for a Diet Coke with a gentle, apologetic smile and it ends with Sirius holding Remus’s hand and pressing a cool flannel to his feverish brow when his muscles are so taut he can barely stand it and he’s crying _again_ and he’s sure he’s lost control of his bladder but he’s just as sure that Sirius won’t mention it and will take the sheets and Remus’s underwear down to the washing machine in the kitchen once Remus finally drifts off. And yes the worried glances and Lily treating him like he’s made of glass are annoying as fuck but if the other side of that is Sirius’s gentle kisses and quiet promises when Remus admits that everything aches too much to stay on his hands and knees then really, Remus can’t complain. He shouldn’t complain.

There’s a long silence, punctuated only by the occasional drunken jeer of a leaving party in the distance as the park rangers round up the stragglers and the sun finally disappears over the treeline. Even without it, the air is still close and heavy and Remus reaches for Sirius’s slightly sweaty hand with a lump in his throat.

“Come on,” murmurs Sirius after a moment, pulling gently. “Let’s go home.”

 

* * *

 

The house is silent save for Remus’s own laboured breathing and the wet, dirty sounds of Sirius’s mouth on him as he parts Remus’s cheeks with warm hands. It’s hot in Remus’s room again, even with the window wide open and the big light off, the night outside threatening a long-overdue storm and the air inside thick with the smell of sweat and arousal. Remus lets his head fall to the cool sheets on his single mattress, the pillows and duvet forgotten on the floor as Sirius grips his hips to hold them up, his tongue still working lazily against Remus. Tonight’s syringe is capped and lying in the bin in the bathroom down the corridor, the now ever-present bruise on Remus’s thigh aching just as it has done these past few weeks as he pushes back against the maddening heat behind him.

Balmy summer nights like this were made for slow, dirty sex, Remus thinks when he comes untouched across the mattress, his cock softening to hang spent between his spread legs as Sirius continues to mouth hotly at his wet hole, and the low roll of thunder breaks through the electric air outside the open window.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in forever so comments/kudos help me out a lot! Thanks for reading x


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